The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.
The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.
To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.
The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.
To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history.
Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.
A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against the enterprise of an aspiring prince.
Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
Where error is irreparable, repentance is useless.
The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.